The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) recently adopted five resolutions condemning Israel, including the formation of a “fact-finding mission” to investigate alleged Israeli violations relating to settlements. The vote was 36 in favour, 1 against (U.S.A) and 10 abstaining. Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has denounced the UNHRC. "Until today, the council has made 91 decisions, 39 of which dealt with Israel, three with Syria and one with Iran,"

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, noted that the Council “ignored our own proposed resolutions on systematic abuses committed by China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe—the current session is adopting half of all its condemnatory resolutions against one single state, Israel.” He added “The council’s new fact-finding mission on settlements is a fraud, with the guilty verdict dictated in advance, and is...(a) one-sided resolution that says nothing of officially-sanctioned Palestinian terrorism, rocket fire and incitement to hatred, anti-Semitism and genocide.”

The Lesson of Haman

And Palestinian terrorism goes on, uncondemned by World Opinion. On Sunday, March 11, 2012 , some 200,000 Israeli children throughout southern Israel spent the day hiding in bomb shelters as Palestinian terrorists poured missiles and mortars into the area from Gaza. During the previous week 222 rockets were fired wounding dozens of Israelis. Near the border, during Purim celebrations a Grad missile and more than 20 rockets rained down.

The festival of Purim is celebrated every year around this time. It commemorates the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia from Haman’s plot “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, infants and women, in a single day.” (Esther 3:13)

Just as Purim is typical of God’s miraculous deliverance of the Jews, so Haman is typical of the enmity of most of the world toward the Jew, The Babylonians deported Israel intending the nation should disappear among other captive nations and yet 70 years later, as prophesied, the Jews were allowed back to the land, and the Babylonians disappeared into history. The Romans ejected the whole Nation from Palestine and barred them from returning on pain of death and yet there are no more Romans and the Jew is established in their own state. Hitler tried to annihilate every Jew in Europe and only succeeded in making the world sympathetic to the establishment of a homeland for the Jews.

If only the world, and anti-Semites in particular, would learn the lessons of history and the absolute truth of God’s promise to Abraham - Genesis 12:3 ‘And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.’

Unfortunately sympathy can be short lived and, undoubtedly, Israel has always responded to aggression swiftly and with rigour. There can be no doubt, where the world’s sympathies lie now. The Jews are blamed for oppressing the Palestinians and other of the world’s woes.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ‘friends’ are rapidly becoming her enemies. Egypt, who made a peace treaty in 1979 views Israel's retaliatory strikes on Gaza, as nothing short of war crimes and recently its Parlaiment voted unanimously to expel Israel's ambassador from Cairo stating "Egypt will never be the friend, partner or ally of the Zionist entity which we consider as the first enemy of Egypt and the Arab nation,"

‘The wandering Jew’

As well as her traditional enemies Israel is rapidly losing friends and gaining enemies among those who sway public opinion. 11 countries considered to have good ties with Israel voted against her for the UNHRC fact finding mission. Why should this be, why should the Jew come in for such enmity?

Theodor Herzl author of the book ‘the Jewish State’( Der Judenstatt) put his finger on the reason. ‘We might perhaps be able to merge ourselves entirely into surrounding races, if they were to leave us in peace for a period of two generations. But they will not leave us in peace. For a little period they manage to tolerate us, and then their hostility breaks out again and again. The world is provoked by our prosperity because it has for centuries been accustomed to consider us as the most contemptible among the poverty stricken. In its ignorance and narrowness of heart, it fails to observe that prosperity weakens our Judaism and extinguishes our peculiarities. It is only pressure that forces us back to the parent stem; it is only hatred encompassing us that makes us strangers once more.’

Even when Jews wish to assimilate with the nations in which they live, even when they are Public Benefactors, Great Scientists, Doctors and War Heroes, something prevents them from merging and being lost in the Society in which they dwell. Such was the case in Germany in the last War. Why? Because they are God’s witnesses to the truth of His word and because He condemned them to be a continual ‘proverb’ for their sins. Deuteronomy 28:37 states ‘ And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee.’ Nonetheless, they are still God’s Chosen People (Dan 11:15) who He has not cast off (Romans 11:1) and because of this as the war against sin and God’s people wages, they will continue to bear the enmity of those who will not have Him rule over them (Luke 19:14)

Throughout the pages of scripture a reoccurring theme is seen. In Ezekiel 25:15–17 God speaks of the Philistines, the ancient nation who once inhabited the Gaza region. He describes their “old hatred”:

Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because the Philistines have dealt by revenge, and have taken vengeance(on Israel) with a despiteful heart, to destroy it for the old hatred; Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will stretch out mine hand upon the Philistines..And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

Later, in Ezekiel 35:5-7, God describes his judgments against the Edomites - because of their perpetual hatred:

The same age-old hatred and envy that has enraged the nations who have wanted Israel destroyed has been revived today as, not anti-Semitism but anti-Zionism. Jews are targeted because they, as Jews, are seen to be related the State of Israel. Yet Jesus, the Messiah, is to reign from Jerusalem and the present State of Israel is the nucleus of the future kingdom of God. Its no way perfect but it is developing. This can be seen in the way Israel’s religious awakening is occurring just as might be expected from reading Ezekiel 36 which describes Israel to be as a body slowly coming back to life. Israel waits for Elijah who Malachi prophecies will be sent “before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD” when “he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:5-6). Until then the Jew still remains a “proverb” and “witness” to the truth of the Bible and the existence and purpose of God with the earth. Isaiah 43:10

Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.

As God’s witnesses they demonstrate the Truth of His Promises to Abraham and about Jesus. And, as with all Gods Servants, this sets them at odds with sin, in particular the nations who wish to try to frustrate God’s purposes with the earth. They are to be the mortal nucleus of the future kingdom helping eventually to bring all nations to God. Daniel tells us, in chapter 2:44:“the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.”

Today’s troubles for the Jews, both in the Land and throughout the world, are a sure sign that the return of Christ is near. For there is a time coming when the world’s Jewry will find that their strength and abilities will be of no avail. There is to be great clash between the Kingdom of Men and the Kingdom of God and when in dire distress the Jews will finally seek the help of the Messiah they rejected. Zec 12:10 ‘they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.’

The blessings for the people of Israel lie not in blending into the world but in the land promised to Abraham. May God’s people heed the warnings and return to the land of promise. May Messiah come and put an end to the wickedness of the anti-Semitic nations of the world and change world opinion of the children of Abraham as is recorded in Zechariah 8:23 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.